Saturday, April 14, 2012

During the offseason Luke Scott changed from one AL East to another as he left the Baltimore Orioles for the Tampa Bay Rays. When he got to Tampa he relived the moment he had as a member of the Orioles when they knocked the Boston Red Sox out of the playoffs on the last night of the season. In the process Scott had some anti-Red Sox sentiment as he revealed how he felt about the Red Sox fans.

“As a baseball player, going [to Fenway Park] to work, it’s a dump,” Scott told Scott Chastain of MLB.com earlier this week. “I mean, it’s old. It does have a great feel and nostalgia, but at the end of the day, I’d rather be at a good facility where I can get my work in. A place where I can go hit in the cage. Where I have space and it’s a little more comfortable to come to work.

“You’re packed in like sardines there. It’s hard to get your work in. ... You have to go to their weight room if you want to lift. From a fan’s perspective, it’s probably pretty cool to go see a game at a historic park. But from a player’s point of view, it’s not a place where you want to go to work.”

Scott once again fans the flames with his disdain for the Boston Red Sox.

Terrell Owens left the Dallas Cowboys under a black cloud. According to Owens it was a cloud of suspicion as to why he left Dallas. That cloud was Tony Romo. Owens believes that Romo helped grease the skids on his way out of Dallas.

In a radio interview on The Ben and Skin Show [KESN-FM] 103.3 in Dallas, Owens said he believes that Romo "had a hand" in him leaving the Cowboys.

"With that situation, dude, I've kind of lost my respect for that situation," Owens told The Ben and Skin Show [KESN-FM] 103.3 in Dallas. "Man, that's a guy I shed tears for, I went to bat for. Then obviously, ultimately I'm not in Dallas anymore and I know he definitely had a hand in that. So, again, it's one of those things that you just kind of have to bite your tongue and keep moving on, you know what I mean?

Owens went on about how he and the other receivers weren't being targeted as much as tight end Jason Witten.

"It wasn't just me," Owens said. "I was just a voice. Sometimes I said things that a lot of people thought. I just happened to be one of those guys that really voiced their opinion. I wasn't the only one that felt that way. There were games where other guys were open. I wasn't saying that to get the ball thrown to me a lot more times. I was all about winning. During the course of the games, if you watch the film, there were other guys that were open that didn't get the ball. That was my thing.

"I think that's what's really misconstrued is that my passion and things that I say can be viewed that I'm being selfish and it's all about me, but my goal has always been about winning a championship, and I think if you really ask my teammates that, they'll really convey that and they'll tell you honestly that's what I'm about."

No mention on how he dropped passes that were thrown to him.

I believe all Owens wanted to do was win but he didn't know how to go about being a winning teammate. When things went wrong he opted to throw his teammates under the bus and not take accountability for his own actions. Owens spoke for the receivers as a whole but since he spoke and was the loudest voice he got the blame. Sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut and let things play out.

Much has been made of Warren Sapp filing bankruptcy and his $6.7 million of debt. I'm pretty sure it wasn't easy for him, considering the lifestyle he was living. but you gotta do what you gotta do. And for Warren the choice was easy. File bankruptcy or go to jail.

"Do you think I wanted to declare bankruptcy?'' Sapp said. "Do you think if there was any other way possible I would have done it? It was either this or go to jail. Those were my choices.''

Sapp explained that a construction deal gone bad helped contribute to some of his financial problems. The failed deal resulted in Sapp having his earnings from the NFL Network garnished for 11 months.

The idea was to build low-income housing in Fort Pierce in 2005. Sapp said the original agreement was the houses would not be built until a buyer had been approved for a mortgage, but one of his partners approved the construction of three houses so there would be something to market. But 2005 was not a good time for real estate, and the houses went unsold.

"It didn't go well,'' said Sapp, who has a condo in Hollywood, Fla. "At the end of the day, we owed them a million dollars, and the two numb- - - - put their heads in the sand. They went after me.''

Because of the debt, Sapp's earnings from the NFL Network — 100 percent, he said — were garnished for 11 months. That meant his bills went unpaid, causing the debt spiral that led to his Chapter 7 filing.

"You tell me what to do,'' Sapp said. "Do you keep working without a check? If you don't pay your child support, you go to jail. This wasn't something I wanted to do. This was something I had to do.''

There also are reports about his missing Super Bowl ring. Sapp says he misplaced it and others are skeptical of the claim. I have to side with Sapp since others have had their rings lost, misplaced, or stolen, so it's not like it hasn't happened before.

“Is it so unbelievable that I misplaced my ring?” Sapp said. “I wore it for 365 days, and we had a 7-9 season [in Tampa Bay in 2003] and I went to Oakland and I took it off. You never saw me with it anywhere. The only time I brought it out was when the NFL Network wanted us to wear it.

“We were at the Super Bowl, and I thought I handed it to someone, and he said I didn’t. I checked my luggage to see if it was in a side pocket. I checked my suit to see if I put it somewhere. What was I going to do? Yell and scream because I lost a ring? That ring didn’t make me a champion. Derrick Brooks, Simeon Rice, Ronde Barber, Brian Kelly, Dwight Smith. That crew made me a champion.”

Sapp may be down, but not out. He's embarrassed but not broken up about his financial situation.

"When you live like I do,'' he said, "you know where you are and what you have to do. I'm not at war with me. I promise you this. I will never go to jail.''

"This is just another situation I have to get myself out of,'' he said. "I grew up without cable and without air conditioning. Things aren't that bad yet.

"This isn't as tough a situation as when I came out of college, and there were reports of seven positive drug tests, and I was a 21-year-old man. I was coming to the worst franchise in pro football, and Sam Wyche was running a five-ring circus, and my teammates were calling me 'super-rook' because they didn't want me here. You stick a diamond in a pile of s- - - and it's still a diamond.

"If there is air in my lungs, I'll find a way.''

Sapp has a strong personality that may rub some the wrong way, but he'll be damned if he lets this keep him down. He considers this another obstacle in the game of life.

With off-season workouts and the NFL draft right around the corner, the Detroit Lions are reeling from off-field distractions. Marijuana arrests to Mikel Leshoure and Nick Fairley to be specific. The arrests gives Lions fans plenty to be nervous about. The Lions look to be headed in the right direction and they turn into the Cincinnati Bengals.

Nate Burleson isn't one to take this lightly. In an interview on the NFL Network Burleson let it be known that he plans having a talk with the youngsters to let them know that kind of behavior won't be tolerated.

“I’m just going to say tighten up,” Burleson said during an appearance on "Total Access" Thursday on NFL Network. “We’ve done too much to get to where we’re at. There’s been a black cloud hanging over Detroit for so long, so for us to go from 6-10 to 10-6 and feel like we’re heading in the right direction and just a few mistakes happen, we’ve got to tell the young guys to get it together.

“But here’s the thing, I really believe that, in the analogy of football, you’ve got to fumble in order to have great ball security. So in life, these guys got to stumble a little bit. And you know as a young guy in the league, you’re going to make those mistakes and hopefully this is just one thing that happens and doesn’t happen again for a lot of these guys.”

Fairley and Leshoure weren't the only ones to run afoul of the law. Ndamukong Suh had his episode of the "Fast and the Furious", and fellow 2011 rookie Johnny Culbreath paid a fine after being arrested for possession of the drug in a South Carolina hotel in January.

“I’m a little bit different, I don’t want to put people on blast in front of the team,” Burleson said. “Sometimes you’re going to need to do that. Or a certain guy, certain situations, they need to feel that embarrassment of everybody looking down on them. But some of these guys that we saw on the board, these are good young men and I know that they’re passionate about being professional athletes, it’s just that they make mistakes.”

“Obviously, when you talk to a young guy and he doesn’t listen, the old-school method is physical confrontation,” Burleson said. “I came (into the NFL in) ‘03 and some of these vets, they put your hands on you before they let you damage what they helped build. But I don’t think we’re going to get to that. And also coaches might say we’re just going to sit the guy down, we’re going to take the guy away from him and then see how he responds.”

At this point in the team's development, the Lions don't need players to be acting like hooligans off the field.